Alameda was shaking with music, food and libations during this afternoon’s St. George Spirits Holiday Open House.

Lance Winters’:

... pain was transformed into our pleasure in the Agua Azul:

In his quest to chop up blue agave, Lance hacked his way through a variety of devices (including the destruction of 2 chainsaws.) He ended up using an industrial mechanism (designed for creating K-9 kibble) to tear through his prickly produce.

Cristal is the unaged distilled blue agave, Reposado is made from agave smoked (at T-Rex in Berkeley) and aged 6 months in used bourbon barrels. The Anejo also uses the smoked agave and was aged 1 year in used bourbon and French oak barrels. We loved our flight of these sensational, succulent spirits. The clear, crisp, floral Cristal, Resposado’s clean, balanced, smoke and the well rounded, almond Anejo. If you’re in the market for a local, Pee Wee Herman dance inducing beverage - look no further.

... screaming through the door to this concessional booth. We usually circle back for cone-centric contentment, but Chubby broke with conevention when he felt a calling to the mass of their sundaes. The coffee sundae ($6.50):

... with scoops of coffee-toffee ice cream, almond toffee, hot fudge and marcona almonds converted him into a man of the cloth napkin. The congregation of cool, smooth, crunchy, chocolaty, nutty, whipped-creamy, coffee goodness cult-ivated our devoted following making us truly believe that it will be a long time until our last rites.

The combination lunch plates ($9.00 each) at Citrus and Spice are a choice from a list of 5 entrees and 5 sides. I went with the basil eggplant chicken:

... which was a mild medley of soft eggplant, mushrooms, peppers, chicken and basil served with a mound of rice. The taro fritters:

...were pleasing, polka dotted starch patties.

Chubby went with the chicken pad Thai with a fresh shrimp roll:

The noodles with tofu, spouts, green onion, egg and chicken were on the bland side without much in the way of textural interest and the shrimp cylinder had a nice dose of mint injected in this rice vermicelli dominant roll.

As far as combo lunches under a tenner go, this place provides reasonable belly ballast. I get the feeling that (as with most places) an a la carte order might deliver more of the promised spice.

...may have pot-ential, but we bypassed the maryjane for joe at the coffee joint today.

We’re always a little wary when we enter Comforts since we have experienced a lot of dis at this cafe and deli, but the person who helped us today didn’t scold an elderly person or dispense abuse along with the chow...she was actually very nice (maybe there is something to this hemp milk stuff).

We went with some Dee’s mini organic donuts (80¢ each):

...in pumpkin spice and Meyer lemon which weren’t our thing. It’s not that they were bad, the lemon glaze had a good citrus kick but the cake loop didn’t hold enough textural interest for the elevated expectation inspired by the outlay of dough. I applaud their use of organic ingredients, but feel Iliad-ease with these diminutive doughnuts. It seems that my taste in the dough-minion runs too lowbrow to be in Dee’s target audience.

In retrospect, I should have gotten baked on one of Comforts’ spliffy beverages to round out my appreciation with THC of the mini munchies made with TLC (although they claim to weed out all of this chemical compound before it hits your latte.)

This is a good place to feed your inner Woody Harrelson (but I’m trying to starve mine out.)

...swimming in a pool of olive oil with a radish, cuke and arugula salad.

We went with a friend who doesn’t eat animals and the vegetarian options turned out to be limited (since they used chicken stock in their squash risotto) so she went with the spaghetti with tomato sauce.

They were cool about leaving the pancetta off the side of Brussels sprouts ($7.50) and the chard ($7.50) came without animal enhancement. Both were examples of pristine produce procurement.

...fell off the bone from its long braise. Carrots and gremolata added flavor fragments to this fregola festooned feast.

The service was friendly, accommodating and efficient and the chow continues to impress by their not mucking around too much with good quality ingredients (but it would be nice to have an additional vegetarian offering.)